Hands
by hippie-girl 31
Summary: One-shot set between 2x12 and 2x13. Djaq thinks about hands...and the men she's known.


_**Author's Note: Written for Intercomm at livejournal. Takes place between 2x12 and 2x13, on the ship to Acre. **_

_**Summary: Djaq thinks about hands...and the men she's known.**_

**oOo**

Djaq did not know when she had developed the habit of judging men by their hands. As far as she could recall, it was just something she had always done. Eyes and words and even body language could never be completely trusted—it was too easy for someone to use them for deception.

But the hands never lie.

From the time she was a small child, she'd been fascinated by her _father's_ hands. They were skilled and steady and full of a strength and wisdom not many men possessed. They were covered in scars from needle pricks, tiny cuts, and even teeth marks from patients—from children to the aged—who had clamped down on them in pain or fear.

They were _good_ hands. Helping hands. Hands that had held back death more times than she could count. The hands of a _good man_.

Then there were the hands of her brother, with his long fingers stained blue-black with ink. The hands of a scholar—better suited to holding a quill than a sword. Oh how she had wept the day he'd had to put aside his books and parchment and take up arms in order to defend their home. How her heart still ached whenever she thought of his beautiful hands stained crimson with the blood of young men no older than himself. Or the sight of them clenched tightly against his belly as the last of his _own_ blood had seeped through his slender fingers out onto the sand.

His, too, were the hands of a _good man_. Honest and innocent and meant for far greater things than this cruel world had allowed.

Yes, Djaq had studied butchers' hands, bakers' hands, and the hands of servants old and young—all hard-working men who took pride in their work. And artisans who used their hands to create beauty as well as holy men who employed theirs for prayer and comfort. She had even known men so noble in birth that their hands had retained the soft smoothness of an infant's—so unaccustomed to work or worry as they were.

And she had grown far too used to the sight of soldiers' hands. Steeped as they always were in blood that would never wash away. Covered in scrapes and gashes, defensive wounds worn with pride because they were proof these men had fought and won. They'd survived battles where others had fallen and yet they lived on to fight another day.

_Decent men_, many of them. Coarse and rough-spoken and often too well-acquainted with _death_ to hold any proper reverence for _life_. But _decent_ nonetheless.

But the filthy and clammy hands of slave traders were hands she wished she could forget. The weight of them as they'd pinned her down and shackled her or the oily grit they'd left on her skin when they'd grabbed her and tossed her into the darkness of the ship's hold still caused her to wake in the night with a chill.

_Devils_, the lot of them. Surely they were only permitted to walk the earth because neither heaven nor hell would have them.

And as she looked about her on the deck of the small ship that was carrying them across the world, Djaq took in the sight of the hands of her comrades. The men she had come to know as her family.

There were the hands of the former nobleman, once closed tightly around the hilt of the sword he'd used to kill her people but which he now held open in peace and charity. And the hands of his former servant. _Giving_ hands that were as marred by hardship as his heart often was by neglect.

Or the large hands of the lonely woodsman. Able to crush an enemy with no effort at all but capable of a gentleness she had rarely seen in her life.

And the gambler, with hands as smooth as the lies that rolled off his tongue. Hands that grasped in desperation and clung in self-doubt to the only friends he'd ever known.

_Good men_. Each and every one of them. She often doubted if they even fully understood their own worth. But _she_ did. And she counted herself most fortunate to live and fight alongside some of the greatest men the world would ever know. Men whom history would remember and honor for generations to come.

But as she looked down at the calloused hand that nearly swallowed her small one, she was filled with a security and a peace she had never known before. In front of the others, he held onto her with a careful respect that was in direct contrast to the tender confidence with which his rough palms glided over her body during their far too infrequent moments of privacy. She had seen those hands clenched in grief and bitterness one day, only to be put to use creating something of true genius and beauty the very next. It made her heart dance and her head spin.

They were the hands of a fighter, a lover, and a friend.

And as he absently ran a coarse thumb over the back of _her_ hand, communicating love and strength with every stroke, Djaq knew without a single doubt that _these_ hands belonged to the very _best man_ of all.


End file.
